298 CREATION BY LAW. 



Intermediate or generalized Forms of extinct Animals, 

 an indication of Transmutation or Development. 



The misconception of this writer illustrates another 

 point very frequently overlooked. It is an essential 

 part of Mr. Darwin's theory, that one existing animal 

 has not been derived from any other existing animal, 

 but that both are the descendants of a common an- 

 cestor, which was at once different from either, but, 

 in essential characters, intermediate between them both. 

 The illustration of the duck and the gull is therefore 

 misleading ; one of these birds has not been derived 

 from the other, but both from a common ancestor. 

 This is not a mere supposition invented to support the 

 theory of natural selection, but is founded on a variety 

 of indisputable facts. As we go back into past time, 

 and meet with the fossil remains of more and more 

 ancient races of extinct animals, we find that many 

 of them actually are intermediate between distinct 

 groups of existing animals. Professor Owen con- 

 tinually dwells on this fact : he says in his " Paleon- 

 tology," p. 284 : "A more generalized vertebrate 

 structure is illustrated, in the extinct reptiles, by 

 the affinities to ganoid fishes, shown by Ganocephala, 

 Labyrinthodontia, and Icthyopterygia ; by the affinities 

 of the Pterosauria to Birds, and by the approximation 

 of the Dinosauria to Mammals. (These have been re- 

 cently shown by Professor Huxley to have more affinity 

 to Birds.) It is manifested by the combination of 

 modern crocodilian, chelcnian, and lacertian characters 



